Social Realism is always the best form of cinema to use for a short film. Social Realism is the depiction of society in its deprived areas demonstrating a side of Britain that nobody likes to see. However they have been set for different situations that the film is based around. For instance This is England talks about the harsh realities during Thatchers reign as Prime Minister. It showed the social unrest however in Gravity a short film by Colin Hutton demonstrates the fear of gun crime and youth violence in today's society. These situations for some people in Britain is just ordinary life and depicts a side of Britain that isn’t popular or even well known outside of the country. Social Realism is mainly a low budget type of film. You don’t need to be flash or have fancy action. However the set needs to be live to make it more realistic and it needs to be sombre. This helps us in filming because London during winter time is a very dark place. This will all add to the realism. Now because the film will be set in London, we will have to have cockney sounding characters or as a modern alternative a lot of ethnic sounding characters with a possibility of a mixture of both. Most of the dialogue (very little in the short film) will be improvised. This is a trademark of the social realist genre that makes it very unique it will also use a lot of colloquial language adding further to the realism almost making it a documentary. We will add to that sense that it resembles a documentary by having the main character narrate throughout the film which is a convention amongst certain short films. Social Realism is a very British genre and isnt very popular around the world outside of britain. It is a popular choice to consider due to the britishness of the characters and we can also set it in a very british town or landscape.
The other theme we were most intrigued by was the Romantic Comedy genre which in Britain has somewhat taken off since the 1990’s and the introduction of urban fairytales (Four Weddings and a Funeral, 1994, an instant British classic). Comedy is an integral part of British media. They are very popular as seen with Urban Fairytales when released the USA. This also shows a very strong monocultural society with many posh people the sort that appeal to Americans. They always introduce an american character in order to make sales in the states. The film being an Urban Fairytale is going to have to include some comedy yet with very little dialogue this will have to be introduced through the voice of a narrator (the voice of the protagonist) and the use of some visual comedy of the Laurel and Hardy sort. This genre however is a very big budget due to its American backing on the other hand we don’t have this sort of backing so the film will have to be filmed live. The filming will take place in and around Ealing Broadway shopping center, most Urban Fairytales are always filmed around areas of very little danger and with quite alot of commerce. It is deemed as a very nice part of town and easily accessible for the film crew. However shooting this film live will be very problematic considering the business of the shopping center during the hours in which we plan to film. these films are very rarely iomprovised by the actoirs due to the massive budgets of the backers. We are not going to have a mono cultural society such as in the more famous British Urban Fairytales. As in most Urban Fairytales we will try and show some of the more iconic scenery’s in London however we doubt that Ealing has a red telephone box or the big red bus in the town center, this shows Britishness in the scenery and it is easily identifiable. The monocultural society is also important in depicting britishness.
Our next films are interesting yet not all very plausible. Spy/ espionage is important in society, the James Bond franchise is very important in order to establish that the British empire is great. The audience find this genre very popular because of there depiction of a truly Great Britain. This is done through representation of present fears in society, everybody is scared of Islamic extremists going on the underground and blowing up a train with many people on it causing death, casualties and severe delays. However the first James Bond films were about the Russians and the Cold War. The spy is from the old Etonians society however we would need him to be bland in terms of accent so as to show that he is classless and represents the country as a whole with the authority of the upper class, the intelligence of the middle class and the strength of the working class. This however is unlikely to be filmed due to the fact that it would need to be longer than a short film would have it. It is also a rather difficult film to attempt showing brutishness in one character and evil in another character.
The other genre we are considering without really being enthusiastic for it is the multicultural cinema. there are two types of multicultural cinema the first is the happy family/ romantic comedy where everybody is happy to be in britain with there families and the total lack of racism in the society. The other is the dangers and the segragation of society in britain due to the lack of love towards immigtrants. Films such as Brick Lane and Dirty Pretty Things demonstrate the dangers of immigration. In Brick Lane the film shows the racism and race/religious divisions within the country. In Dirty Pretty Things they demonstrate the problem that illegal immigrants have to face with lack of good jobs and lack of proper medical health. They also have no policing help because they are illegal.These are the depressing facts of immigration and are influential for short films.
The film genres we are not going to use are the obvious ones. The heritage film is too expensive and too long to film to be classified as a short film. We do not have the resources or the time in order to film a historical moment accurately or inaccurately. The length of the film with all the details is going to be much longer than five minutes we will also need many characters in order to make it more historically accurate. We are not ready to film a short film like that. We also need to have the costumes ready and they cost a lot of money to buy and possibly more money to make from scratch.
Dystopian films will also cost a lot of money and we will need some Computer-Generated Imagery which is very difficult to include especially for a short film. Once again because it’s a short film we cannot spend too long and we can’t have the full story because in dystopian films we need to have a long beginning, a horrific middle and a happy ending and at most our film will last 45 minutes. We will also need to create a very quiet London and the only place I can think of is Boston Manor Park. The dystopian film that marked us most was 28 days later (set in a deserted London) I doubt we could create such a deserted place without disturbing the locals or for that we don’t have any costumes for zombies or dilapidated people. Thus we are not going nowhere near these genres for our short film.
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